Tariffs and trade turmoil driving up cost and build times for datacenters

World War Fee Datacenter operators in Northern Europe say US tariffs and growing global geopolitical instability are inflating costs and causing delays to construction projects.

Demand for rackspace has shot up in the past year or two, driven by AI infrastructure for training ever larger models.

A survey by datacenter specialist Onnec finds that AI workloads have increased by an average of 42 percent over the past twelve months, with nearly two-thirds of operators saying that requirements to support AI were higher than expected, stretching the capacity of both existing and planned sites.

The report is based on a survey of 250 senior decision makers from the UK, Ireland and the Nordic countries who say they are being hampered by skills shortages, geopolitical turbulence and design complexity.

The news could worry UK premier Keir Starmer, whose government wants to speed up the building of datacenters all over the country to ...